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Thursday, June 30, 2011

This is the last episode of The Glenn Beck Program on Fox News Channel. As you will see, so much has happened in a little over two years.

I really don't remember when I first started posting The Glenn Beck Program on this blog but it was many months ago. When I first started posting it, I noticed that it would disappear from YouTube and I would have to go back in my archives and delete the posts because the video was gone. (I'm sure there are other archived posts on here that need to be deleted because the video has been pulled).

Finally, I stumbled upon a site that posted the show every day. I noticed they changed the name of the source YouTube account quite often and I realized 'my source' was trying to be incognito about the content he was posting (Fox News was on the prowl and would have it removed!) so I decided to be incognito, as well. Hence, The Daily News was born.

My source, for all of these months, has been Joe Seales of The Daily Beck. I even got the above picture from his site today. Please, take the time to read his Thank You post and put his site in your bookmarks alongside Republic Heritage.

Monday, June 27, 2011

If Mark Levin isn't the leading conservative of the day, he's certainly one of them. I contend he is the most articulate and sagacious renowned conservative. A debate between Levin and Barack Obama would be something to behold.

Levin held several positions in the Reagan administration. He's a constitutional lawyer, an accomplished author, and host of one of the top syndicated radio programs, The Mark Levin Show. He's also president of Landmark Legal Foundation, which has, among other things, provided support to Virginia in its lawsuit against the Obama Administration over ObamaCare.

On his Thursday, June 23rd, radio show, Levin did a magnificent job of deconstructing point-by-point what is, in effect, a modern-day "progressive manifesto" in the form the current Time cover story titled "One Document, Under Siege." The piece is written by the magazine's managing editor, Richard Stengel, and was the subject of a recent AT blog post. Levin's excellent retort to Stengel can be heard here (from here).

Why we don't hear a steady drumbeat from the mouths of Sen. Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, et al. of the fundamental conservative points and principles enunciated by Levin is a mystery and a source of frustration.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Is Chris Wallace going to ask Ron Paul this question? Jon Huntsman? Mitt Romney? Newt Gingrich? Tim Pawlenty? Arguably, all of these candidates have done and said some flaky things so will he ask them the 'Are you a flake?' question? No. He won't.

He chose to attack one of the only real conservatives in this race (Herman Cain & Rick Santorum are the others). The candidates mentioned above are not real conservatives so they will get a pass. Chris Wallace was the flake today, however. - Reggie

“We are very excited to visit historic Pella and its opera house and look forward to seeing the finished film for the first time with fellow Americans from the heartland,” Palin, who was Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate in 2008, said in a news release this morning…

Longtime GOP campaign strategist Robert Haus said he thinks Palin deliberately chose to come to Iowa “smack dab in the middle of two other big events in the state.”

“Her timing is impeccable,” said Haus, of Urbandale. “Clearly she has not ruled out a run for president.”…

“She’s made a very good career out of confounding conventional wisdom,” Haus said.

At WallBuilders, we are truly blessed by God, owning tens of thousands of original documents from the American Founding – documents clearly demonstrating the Christian and Biblical foundations both of America and of so many of her Founding Fathers and early statesmen. We frequently post original documents on our website so that others may enjoy them and learn more about many important aspects of America’s rich moral, religious, and constitutional heritage that are widely unknown or misportrayed today.

We recently posted a December 21, 1809, letter from John Adams to Dr. Benjamin Rush (a close friend of Adams and a co-signer of the Declaration of Independence). That letter was Adams’ reply to a remarkable letter written him by Dr. Rush on October 17, 1809, describing a dream Rush believed God had given him about Adams. WallBuilders providentially obtained this original letter from an amazing presidential collection of a 100+ year old Floridian woman.

We often use quotes from that letter, including Adams’ bold declaration that:

The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this Earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost. . . . There is no authority, civil or religious – there can be no legitimate government – but that which is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words, damnation. 1

This letter certainly contains profound Christian content, but that is not particularly surprising, for Adams wrote dozens of letters with similarly powerful Christian declarations. Also not surprising is the fact that liberals and atheists have attacked this letter and its content; they dismiss it with the excuse that Adams didn’t really mean what he said in the letter, or that it was code for something different from what he actually said. But what was surprising and unexpected is that this letter and its remarkable content did not set well with some Christians, especially Chris Pinto. Pinto has produced videos claiming not only that America does not have a Biblical foundation but specifically asserting that the Founding Fathers were largely pagans who represented the spirit of the Anti-Christ. He believes that Christians should not be involved in the political arena or similar areas of culture. 2

Pinto seems to have developed a fixation with WallBuilders, joining with liberals and atheists to demean it and the Founding Fathers. For example, in one video he prepared against me and the Founding Fathers, he specifically addressed the John Adams letter we posted, claiming:

Barton makes it appear as if John Adams was speaking favorably about the Holy Ghost in a letter he wrote to Benjamin Rush. In reality, Adams was mocking the idea of “Holy Ghost authority” and called Christians “dupes” for believing in it. 3

Pinto concludes:

In truth, the letter Barton is presenting provides some of the most damning evidence found anywhere, and is consistent with many of the writings of the Revolutionaries, proving their contempt for Bible-based Christianity. In this letter, John Adams was not speaking in approval of the Holy Ghost, but was rather mocking the idea of it and of the faith of true Christians. . . . Adams did not believe the Holy Ghost was real, and he spoke about it in what can only be called insulting and irreverent terms. 4

Normally, we simply ignore these types of absurd claims, for we believe that the truth speaks for itself and that it will always eventually prevail. In fact, this is why we post so many original and hand-written Founding documents and letters online – we want individuals to see and read them for themselves to be personally aware of what is and is not true. It is important to follow the model praised by the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:11: always check original sources to establish truth. This is why we heavily document quotes and facts back to original sources – such as our best-selling book Original Intent: it contains some 1,700 footnotes, the vast majority of which are dated to primary-source documents published while the Founders were still alive.

(By the way, a notable ACLU attorney decided he would disprove our thesis that the Founding Fathers were largely Christian. He therefore took Original Intent and undertook a project to expose what he considered to be its falsehoods; he went back and checked our quotes against the original sources cited in the book. At the end of his research, he concluded that we had understated the faith of the Founders – that there was actually much more evidence to support their Christian faith than even what we had cited. This ACLU attorney was completely converted and went on to become an eminent court of appeals judge – all because he followed Paul’s model of Acts 17:11 and checked the evidence for himself. We have numerous similar testimonials of the dramatic change that has occurred in individuals who investigated the original facts for themselves.)

So although we typically do not respond to critics such as Pinto, in this case, his videos have confused many Christians who have respectfully asked us to help them sort out the facts and discern the truth. Hence we have chosen to address Pinto’s patently false claims about John Adams.

Significantly, Pinto reached his conclusions that John Adams was mocking the Holy Spirit only by ignoring, omitting, or not understanding lengthy and important segments of Adams’ letter (which is why we posted the complete letter online: to make it much harder for individuals to twist and distort its true meaning). When the segments that Pinto ignored or did not understand are returned to the letter, it becomes obvious that his premises have been infected with three of the five historical malpractices that characterize the current study of history: Modernism, Minimalism, and Deconstructionism (the other two of the five are Poststructuralism and Academic Collectivism, which Pinto also uses in other areas of his videos).

Modernism is the practice of analyzing historical incidents and persons as if they lived now rather than in the past. Modernism separates history from its context and setting – a practice that regularly produces flawed conclusions.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Yesterday was a beautiful day for freedom of speech in the Netherlands. An Amsterdam court acquitted me of all charges of hate speech after a legal ordeal that lasted almost two years.

The Dutch people learned that political debate has not been stifled in their country. They learned they are still allowed to speak critically about Islam, and that resistance against Islamization is not a crime. I was brought to trial despite being an elected politician and the leader of the third-largest party in the Dutch parliament. I was not prosecuted for anything I did, but for what I said.

My view on Islam is that it is not so much a religion as a totalitarian political ideology with religious elements. While there are many moderate Muslims, Islam’s political ideology is radical and has global ambitions. I expressed these views in newspaper interviews, op-ed articles, and in my 2008 documentary, “Fitna.”

I was dragged to court by leftist and Islamic organizations that were bent not only on silencing me but on stifling public debate. My accusers claimed that I deliberately “insulted” and “incited discrimination and hatred” against Muslims. The Dutch penal code states in its articles 137c and 137d that anyone who either “publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in any way that incites hatred against a group of people” or “in any way that insults a group of people because of their race, their religion or belief, their hetero- or homosexual inclination or their physical, psychological or mental handicap, will be punished.”

I was dragged to court for statements that I made as a politician and which were meant to stimulate public debate in a country where public debate has stagnated for decades. Dutch political parties see themselves as guardians of a sterile status quo. I want our problems to be discussed. I believe that politicians have a public trust to further debates about important issues. I firmly believe that every public debate holds the prospect of enlightenment.

My views represent those of a growing number of Dutch voters, who have flocked to the Party for Freedom, or PVV. The PVV is the fastest-growing party in the country, expanding from one seat in the 150-seat House of Representatives in 2004, to nine seats in 2006 and 24 seats in 2010. My party’s views, however, are so uncommon in the Netherlands that they are considered blasphemous by powerful elites who fear and resent discussion.

That’s why I was taken to court, even though the public prosecutor saw no reason to prosecute me. “Freedom of expression fulfills an essential role in public debate in a democratic society,” the prosecutors repeatedly said during my trial. “That comments are hurtful and offensive for a large number of Muslims does not mean that they are punishable.”

The Netherlands is one of the few countries in the world where a court can force the public prosecutor to prosecute someone. In January 2009, three judges of the Amsterdam Appeals Court ordered my prosecution in a politically motivated verdict that focused on the content of the case. They implied that I was guilty. The case was subsequently referred to the Amsterdam Court of First Instance.

The judges who acquitted me yesterday already had a peremptory ruling from the appeals court on their desk. They decided, however, to follow the arguments of the public prosecutor, who during the trial had once again reiterated his position and had asked for a full acquittal.

Though I am obviously relieved by yesterday’s decision, my thoughts go to people such as Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard, Austrian human rights activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and others who have recently been convicted for criticizing Islam. They have not been as fortunate. In far too many Western countries, it is still impossible to have a debate about the nature of Islam.

The biggest threat to our democracies is not political debate, nor is it public dissent. As the American judge Learned Hand once said in a speech: “That community is already in the process of dissolution . . . where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists to win or lose.” It has been a tenet in European and American thinking that men are only free when they respect each other’s freedom. If the courts can no longer guarantee this, then surely a community is in the process of dissolution.

Legislation such as articles 137c and 137d of the Dutch Penal Code disgraces our democratic free societies. On the basis of such legislation, I was prevented from representing my million-and-a-half voters in parliament because I had to be in the courtroom for several days, sometimes up to three days per week, during the past year and a half. Such legislation should be abolished. It should be abolished in all Western countries where it exists-and replaced by First Amendment clauses.

Citizens should never allow themselves to be silenced. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak.

Mr. Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and the leader of the Party for Freedom.

A few minutes ago, the state of New York voted to legalize homosexual "marriage." Very sad.

Every state where this is "legal" is because the politicians have dictated it and shoved it down the throats of the people. Every state that has given their people the chance to vote yea or nay - the people have voted nay. Even liberal California has voted against homosexual marriage twice, banning it both times with a state constitutional amendment but the homosexuals won't take "No" for an answer so they have taken it to the courts to have the law and will of the people overturned.

We the People do not want homosexual marriage validated by the State. Once again, the dictators in government have overruled the people.

The DREAM Act mob is on the march again — and this time they have a prominent left-wing journalist leading the charge. My syndicated column below spotlights the serial law-breaking of former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, who is now an illegal alien activist clamoring for amnesty with the backing of the radical Tides Center, a project of George Soros and the former chief organizer of ACORN, Drummond Pike. (Hey, maybe they’ll hire Obama’s grousing illegal alien aunt Zeituni Onyango as a senior fellow.)

Vargas’s splashy revelations in the New York Times come — no coincidence, of course — amid a renewed push for the DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout.

A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”

Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.

The group’s website said it wants to stop Republicans from “manipulating” election results.

“Any serious commitment to wresting control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count,” the group said on its website, accusing some Republican secretaries of state of making “partisan decisions.”

SOSP has sought donations by describing the contributions as a “modest political investment” to elect “clean candidates” to the secretary of state posts.

Named after Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, so-called 527 political groups — such as SOSP — have no upper limit on contributions and no restrictions on who may contribute in seeking to influence the selection, nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates to federal, state or local public office. They generally are not regulated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), creating a soft-money loophole.

While FEC regulations limit individual donations to a maximum of $2,500 per candidate and $5,000 to a PAC, a number of 527 groups have poured tens of millions of unregulated dollars into various political efforts.

SOSP has backed 11 winning candidates in 18 races, including such key states as Ohio, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico and Minnesota.

“Supporting secretary of state candidates with integrity is one of the most cost-efficient ways progressives can ensure they have a fair chance of winning elections,” SOSP said on its website, adding that “a relatively small influx of money — often as little as $30,000 to $50,000 — can change the outcome of a race.”

SOSP was formed in the wake of the ballot-counting confusion in Florida during the 2000 presidential election and a repeat of that chaos in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. Democrats accused Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, both Republicans, of manipulating the elections in favor of GOP candidates — charges Mrs. Harris and Mr. Blackwell denied.

“Does anyone doubt that these two secretaries of state … made damaging partisan decisions about purging voter rolls, registration of new voters, voting machine security, the location of precincts, the allocation of voting machines, and dozens of other critical matters?” SOSP asked on its website.

SOSP said it raised more than $500,000 in 2006 to help elect five Democratic secretaries of states in seven races.

The Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, recommended in 2005 taking away the administration of elections from secretaries of state and giving it to nonpartisan election officers.

“Partisan officials should not be in charge of elections,” said Robert Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. “Both Democrats and Republicans not only compete for power, they try to manipulate the rules to get an advantage.

“We want to make sure that those counting votes don’t have a dog in that game,” said Mr. Pastor, who served as executive director and a member of the commission.

(Reuters) - Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders was acquitted of inciting hatred of Muslims in a court ruling on Thursday that may strengthen his political influence and exacerbate tensions over immigration policy.

The case was seen by some as a test of free speech in a country which has a long tradition of tolerance and blunt talk, but where opposition to immigration, particularly from Muslim or predominantly Muslim countries, is on the rise.

Instantly recognizable by his mane of dyed blond hair, Wilders, 47, is one of the most outspoken critics of Islam and immigration in the Netherlands.

Many of us who immigrated to the United States from either war-ravaged or totalitarian countries, where freedom was either unknown or the quintessence of daydreams, find ourselves baffled by a trait common to the majority of Americans: the belief, consciously or subconsciously, that the worst cannot happen here. That somehow the demoralizing images and disturbing experiences of those elsewhere are confined to those poor souls and will never find their way to American shores.

While this characteristic is found across all political and economic strata, it is particularly rampant among the current ruling class in the United States, who by their control of the culture and education, have ingrained that sort of thinking into the psyche of the vast majority of Americans.

Is this mindset a by-product of 66 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity? Is there something unique in the American character that revels in denial? Is there over-confidence that Americans can accomplish anything? Is this outlook the end-product of a lack of education and appreciation of how the success of the United States is extraordinary and of the fact that since modern man took his first tentative step on the plains of Africa 200,000 years ago until the present less than 9% of all humanity has ever experienced true freedom?

Overwhelming peace and prosperity, over the past many decades, has sown the seeds that will lead to rapid erosion in the American way of life. As the United States has not experienced a major national catastrophe in over 146 years, coupled with no significant economic hardships since 1940, the view across the landscape as far as the mind's eye chooses to see is of never-ending affluence and freedom from strife.

With this perspective in mind, it is easy to believe, as human nature would choose to do, that there will always be an unlimited source of wealth and with that wealth the country should be obligated to see to it that no citizen, as a factor of residency, suffers any hardship. It is a belief easily exploited by the Left as a means of obtaining sufficient votes to acquire and retain power. But this conviction is also the foundation of American socialist dogma for those who revel in the self-importance and superiority that attaches itself to this errant philosophy.

The Missouri River basin encompasses a vast region in the central and west-central portion of our country. This river, our nation's longest, collects the melt from Rocky Mountain snowpack and the runoff from our continents' upper plains before joining the Mississippi river above St. Louis some 2,300 miles later. It is a mighty river, and dangerous.

Some sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing a series of six dams. The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods.

The stable flow of water allowed for the construction of the concrete and earthen levees that protect more than 10 million people who reside and work within the river's reach. It allowed millions of acres of floodplain to become useful for farming and development. In fact, these uses were encouraged by our government, which took credit for the resulting economic boom. By nearly all measures, the project was a great success.

But after about thirty years of operation, as the environmentalist movement gained strength throughout the seventies and eighties, the Corps received a great deal of pressure to include some specific environmental concerns into their MWCM (Master Water Control Manual, the "bible" for the operation of the dam system). Preservation of habitat for at-risk bird and fish populations soon became a hot issue among the burgeoning environmental lobby. The pressure to satisfy the demands of these groups grew exponentially as politicians eagerly traded their common sense for "green" political support.

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report presents the agency's projections of federal spending and revenues over the coming decades. Under current law, an aging population and rapidly rising health care costs will sharply increase federal spending for health care programs and Social Security. If revenues remained at their historical average share of gross domestic product (GDP), such spending growth would cause federal debt to grow to unsustainable levels. If policymakers are to put the federal government on a sustainable budgetary path, they will need to increase revenues substantially as a percentage of GDP, decrease spending significantly from projected levels, or adopt some combination of those two approaches. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this report makes no recommendations.

Recently, the federal government has been recording budget deficits that are the largest as a share of the economy since 1945. Consequently, the amount of federal debt held by the public has surged. At the end of 2008, that debt equaled 40 percent of the nation's annual economic output (a little above the 40-year average of 37 percent). Since then, the figure has shot upward: By the end of this year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects, federal debt will reach roughly 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—the highest percentage since shortly after World War II. The sharp rise in debt stems partly from lower tax revenues and higher federal spending related to the recent severe recession. However, the growing debt also reflects an imbalance between spending and revenues that predated the recession.

As the economy continues to recover and the policies adopted to counteract the recession phase out, budget deficits will probably decline markedly in the next few years. But the budget outlook, for both the coming decade and beyond, is daunting. The retirement of the baby-boom generation portends a significant and sustained increase in the share of the population receiving benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Moreover, per capita spending for health care is likely to continue rising faster than spending per person on other goods and services for many years (although the magnitude of that gap is very uncertain). Without significant changes in government policy, those factors will boost federal outlays sharply relative to GDP in coming decades under any plausible assumptions about future trends in the economy, demographics, and health care costs.

According to CBO's projections, if current laws remained in place, spending on the major mandatory health care programs alone would grow from less than 6 percent of GDP today to about 9 percent in 2035 and would continue to increase thereafter. Spending on Social Security is projected to rise much less sharply, from less than 5 percent of GDP today to about 6 percent in 2030, and then to stabilize at roughly that level. Altogether, the aging of the population and the rising cost of health care would cause spending on the major mandatory health care programs and Social Security to grow from roughly 10 percent of GDP today to about 15 percent of GDP 25 years from now. (By comparison, spending on all of the federal government's programs and activities, excluding interest payments on debt, has averaged about 18.5 percent of GDP over the past 40 years.) That combined increase of roughly 5 percentage points for such spending as a share of the economy is equivalent to about $750 billion today. If lawmakers ultimately modified some provisions of current law that might be difficult to sustain for a long period, that increase would be even larger.

On a personal note, I was going to pay off my only credit card but have decided to use that money for food storage because once our currency collapses, it won't matter whether or not that credit card is paid off. If you want to survive the coming calamity - store food, grow food. Read the story below. - Reggie

A group of US representatives plan to introduce legislation that will legalize marijuana and allow states to legislate its use, pro-marijuana groups said Wednesday.

The legislation would limit the federal government's role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, and allow people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal.

The bill, which is expected to be introduced on Thursday by Republican Representative Ron Paul and Democratic Representative Barney Frank, would be the first ever legislation designed to end the federal ban on marijuana.

WASHINGTON — The financially troubled Postal Service is suspending its contributions to its employees' pension fund.

The agency said Wednesday it is acting to conserve cash as it continues to lose money. The post office was $8 billion in the red last year because of the combined effects of the recession and the switch of much mail business to the Internet. It faces the possibility of running short of money by the end of this fiscal year in September.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., called the announcement "the canary in the coal mine moment for the Postal Service."

"If we don't heed this warning and act quickly, the Postal Service as we know it will cease to exist in the very near future," said Carper, chairman of the Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency.

The post office needs reforms "to cut costs and protect taxpayers from an expensive bailout," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The U.S. economy is crumbling. Businesses are collapsing in record numbers. Jobs have disappeared. Tax revenues are down dramatically. Coincidence?

Everything happening today under Obama resembles the storyline of Ayn Rand’s famous book, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most popular books of all time, selling over 7 million copies. Now, under President Obama, Atlas Shrugged has come to life. Rand prophesized a country dominated by socialists, Marxists and statists, where looters, free loaders and poverty promoters live off the productive class. To rationalize the fleecing of innovative business owners and job creators, the looter class demonized the wealthy, just as Obama and his socialist cabal are doing in real life today.

The central plot of Atlas Shrugged is that in response to being demonized, over-taxed, over-regulated, and punished for success, America’s business owners were disappearing — dropping off the grid, and refusing to work 16-hour days to support those unwilling to put in the same blood, sweat and tears. They were going on strike. Because of that the original proposed title of “Atlas Shrugged” was “The Strike.”

They were going on strike to teach that civilization cannot survive when people are slaves to government. That without a productive class of innovative business owners willing to risk their own money and work 16-hour days, weekends and holidays, there are no jobs and no taxes to pay for government. If you punish the wealthy, the risk-takers, the innovators, you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In Obama’s America, fiction is becoming fact.

The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.

The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million.

The most recent statistics are unsettling and dismaying, despite the increase of 54,000 jobs in the May numbers. Nonagricultural full-time employment actually fell by 142,000, on top of the 291,000 decline the preceding month. Half of the new jobs created are in temporary help agencies, as firms resist hiring full-time workers.

Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from 59,648 in April. Hiring is now 17 percent lower than the lowest level in the 2001-02 downturn. One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work. Equally disturbing is that the number of people unemployed for six months or longer grew 361,000 to 6.2 million, increasing their share of the unemployed to 45.1 percent. We face the specter that long-term unemployment is becoming structural and not just cyclical, raising the risk that the jobless will lose their skills and become permanently unemployable.

Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.

Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent. The 16 percent includes 8.5 million part-timers who want to work full time (which is double the historical norm) and those who have applied for a job within the last six months, including many of the long-term unemployed. And this 16 percent does not take into account the discouraged workers who have left the labor force. The fact is that the longer duration of six months is the more relevant testing period since the mean duration of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, an increase from 37.1 weeks in February.

The inescapable bottom line is an unprecedented slack in the U.S. labor market. Labor's share of national income has fallen to the lowest level in modern history, down to 57.5 percent in the first quarter as compared to 59.8 percent when the so-called recovery began. This reflects not only the 7 million fewer workers but the fact that wages for part-time workers now average $19,000—less than half the median income.

Just to illustrate how insecure the labor movement is, there is nobody on strike in the United States today, according to David Rosenberg of wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff. Back in the 1970s, it was common in any given month to see as many as 30,000 workers on the picket line, and there were typically 300 work stoppages at any given time. Last year there were a grand total of 11. There are other indirect consequences. The number of people who have applied for permanent disability benefits has soared. Ten years ago, 5 million people were collecting federal disability payments; now 8 million are on the rolls, at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $120 billion a year. The states today owe the federal insurance fund an astonishing $90 billion to cover unemployment benefits.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Americans must decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly.

Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.

A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.

The TSA clearly intends for these out-of-nowhere swarms by its officers at community transit centers, bus stops and public events to become a routine and accepted part of American life.

The TSA has conducted 8,000 of these security sweeps across the country in the past year alone, TSA chief John Pistole told a Senate committee June 14. They are part of its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, which targets public transit related places.

All of which is enough to make you wonder if we are watching the formation of the "civilian national security force" President Obama called for on the campaign trail "that is just as powerful, just as strong and just as well funded" as the military.

YouTube description: Rep. Paul Ryan told CNBC that the U.S. is spending its way towards a Greece-like debt crisis. The House-passed Path to Prosperity Budget ensures we stop kicking the can further down the road by cutting spending, saving our entitlement programs and implementing pro-growth economic policies.

Has anyone come forward to say "God bless Margaret Thatcher?" She was right to keep England's currency and sovereignty. - Reggie

UK banks have pulled billions of pounds of funding from the eurozone as fears grow about the impact of a “Lehman-style” event connected to a Greek default.

Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.

Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.

Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

"Despite my affiliation with the Republican Party, I don't think of myself as highly partisan."

-- Mitt Romney in his book No Apology

And there it was again.

Front and center in last night's CNN New Hampshire debate with Republican presidential candidates, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney twice -- not once but twice -- illustrated his problem as a presidential candidate and potential Republican president in the post-Reagan era.

Midway into the debate Romney answered a question on how to deal with the issue of raising the debt limit by saying that as president he would concentrate on "reining in the excesses of government." And when asked about picking a vice president Romney came back to the point; he would "restrain the growth of government."

What is the name in conservative circles that, in the style of the chief villain in the Harry Potter stories, might best be referred to as "You-Know-Who," "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" or "The Dark Lord"?

Can you whisper in print? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.… That would be……

Nelson Rockefeller.

Say what? Speak up!!!! Did you say…

Nelson Rockefeller?????!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, yes.

Nelson Rockefeller. That Nelson Rockefeller.

Grandson of the legendary billionaire oil man John D. Rockefeller and son of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. -- or "Junior" as he was frequently called. Nelson himself was one of the famed five "Rockefeller Brothers," John D. Jr.'s kids. Along with Nelson that included John D. III (father of today's Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat), Laurance, David, and Winthrop. (The remaining sibling of his generation was the frequently unmentioned sister Abby.) All devoted entire lives to philanthropic causes ranging from finance to architecture to the environment and more. While the others went about their varied interests it was Nelson who eagerly served Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower in various national security, foreign policy and domestic capacities before plunging into his own political career as the longtime Republican Governor of New York, two-time presidential candidate and appointed-Vice President of the United States for Gerald Ford.

But as the political world eventually understood, Nelson Rockefeller came to represent something much more than all of the above.

In the world of politics it was Nelson Rockefeller who had the misfortune to have all the political assets one could possibly imagine -- looks, charm, brains, energy and literally all the money he could use. Yet with all of this Rockefeller was totally unable -- if not stubbornly unwilling -- to understand the significance of the conservative revolution that was swirling around him as his own career unfolded. And in not understanding, much less not leading that conservative revolution Rockefeller not only failed spectacularly as a presidential candidate but made himself into a defiant symbol of resistance. He transformed himself into a man so stubbornly enamored of the liberal status quo and its supporting Establishment that his very name attached to that of his party became not simply a descriptive to conservatives but an epithet:

"The Rockefeller Republican."

It was -- and in some quarters remains to this day -- a short-hand, derisive description for Republicans now labeled as a "RINO" -- Republican In Name Only. The Rockefeller Republican became immutably identified as someone whose philosophical moorings and political instincts lay not in the Constitution but rather with the American progressive movement and the liberal Establishment that movement had become. Or, as Rockefeller's longtime intra-party rival Ronald Reagan once described the problem to Time magazine:

"I think the division of the Republican Party grew from pragmatism on the part of some, the Republicans who said, 'Look what the Democrats are doing and they're staying in power. The only way for us, if we want to have any impact at all, is somehow to copy them.' This was where the split began to grow, because there were other people saying, 'Wait a minute. There is great danger in following this path toward Government intervention.'"

Reagan never left any doubt as to the fact that in his use of the word "some" he was decidedly including Nelson Rockefeller.

So as the 2012 Republican campaign to take the presidential chair begins, the obvious question that more and more conservatives are asking, however they phrase it, is this:

Is Mitt Romney the new Nelson Rockefeller?

The question takes on even more import in the wake of the New Hampshire GOP debate last night as Romney reinforced the doubts of Reaganites.